I'd like to say I've traveled extensively with over a hundred countries under my belt. And the one piece of advice I give to everyone is, don't overcomplicate travel. You might want to bookmark a few must-visit locations, perhaps have a rough itinerary for the day, but I encourage everyone to figure it out on the go. But there are a few countries that break that norm. I've been planning a short getaway to Paris, and despite this being my fifth trip over, I can confirm that there's just way too much packed in that city. Every arrondissement has something interesting to see, and every time I'm over, I'm left juggling maps, pins, screenshots, and notes with no real structure to them. Let's just say that it's a problem.

That's why, while looking for a better solution to the problem, I stumbled upon Trip. This self-hosted travel planner focuses on helping you map out the places you want to visit. But more importantly, it helps you create a cohesive itinerary based on your data. It's not jam-packed with features to the point that it would confuse you on the go. Instead, it offers a clean way to organize all your travel data in one place, and it's completely changed how I look at travel planning.

Trip planning with a map-first approach

Bridge together your scattered research into one cohesive view

Unlike more conventional approaches to travel planning that invariably revolve around lists, Trip focuses on the map. Every place I come across during my research is added to Trip as a point on the map. This includes things like interesting restaurants, museums, cafés, and even random spots that I might've stumbled across on Reddit. Photo spots, in particular, are my jam, and I'm always on the lookout for options.

That fixes a fairly big problem in my previous approach. While my map pins were on Google Maps, notes were in Google Keep, and I'd usually have a browser full of tabs open just in case. That's pretty disjointed. Trip brings all these disjointed data points together and anchors them to physical locations on a map.

Since the goal of the app is to manage all these data points, you're always aware of how they connect to each other. That gives you a glanceable view of what you're planning and how far these places might be from each other. It plays a big role in the day-to-day itinerary-making process.

For example, if I drop in a bunch of places to visit clustered around the same area, I know I've got a full day's itinerary chalked out. Meanwhile, if I can quite clearly see that things are far apart, something needs to change. I'm not accidentally planning out a trip where places are so far apart that I end up spending most of the day in transit.

There's a deep layer of organization built in, too. For example, I can group places, filter them, and even add context with personal notes like how long I expect to spend at a spot. A museum like the Louvre? Better chalk out an entire afternoon for that. All this data sits on your own home server, which is a massive benefit for avid travelers like me. Over the years, I've used a lot of travel mapping apps, and many of those no longer exist. That also means that my personal itineraries are no longer accessible. If I want to pass on that information along, I have to scour through photos to put the pieces back together. With Trip, that's no longer a stress point. It even lets you print out a cleaned-up version of your itinerary.

Turn saved places into a plan that you can follow

Map out your days, not just locations

As I mentioned earlier, saving data points is the easy part. The real complexity arises when you are trying to build a travel plan that you can follow through on when you're on the ground. That's where Trip gets really good. Once I've mapped all the essentials out, I start segregating places by date. The app supports multi-day itineraries, of course, so when I look at a cluster of places, I can set a date for them so I know which part of the city I'm going to be in.

While I'd be jumping between my notes and Google Maps earlier on, this self-hosted app presents everything in a single view which makes putting together an itinerary that much easier. Right now, I'm grouping days by area. I've got a day planned out for central Paris, another around my favorite Montmartre district, and a day planned out for shopping. I can then further move locations up and down the list to better align with real-world walking distances, so I'm never too far away from an attraction.

If you're planning a trip with a friend or relative, collaboration is also built, and you can shoot across a link that lets other people add in their interests as well. So, if your significant other wants to spend time looking up Parisian boutiques, you have the data right there, and you can slide it right into your existing itinerary.

Built for organizing your travel plans

Trip is far from the only trip-planning tool around. However, most of them tend to focus heavily on recommendations. That might be good for novice travelers, but I tend to do my own research and have a pretty good idea of what I want to do. Trip, on the other hand, gives you no recommendations at all. Instead, it gives you the tools to organize your travel research better, which is precisely what I needed. If that's you, you might want to install this open-source app and give it a look before your next trip.